Justin Bieber is dropping a defamation lawsuit he filed against two women who accused him of sexual assault on Twitter — claims the star blasted at the time as “outlandish false fabrications.”
In a filing Friday in Los Angeles court, Bieber’s attorneys moved to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit he filed in 2020 against Khadidja Djibrine and an unidentified “Jane Doe” defendant named only as Danielle. When asked why the case was dropped, an attorney for the star told Billboard simply that Bieber had “decided to move on.”
Bieber sued the two women in June 2020, days after they had posted tweets in which they claimed to have been assaulted by the pop star in separate incidents in 2014 and 2015. Repped by Marty Singer and Evan Spiegel of the law firm Lavely & Singer, Bieber called the allegations “malicious lies” and offered public alibis for both alleged incidents.
“It is abundantly clear that these two individuals are trying to capitalize on the climate of fear permeating the entertainment industry, Hollywood and corporate America, whereby it is open season for anyone to make any claim (no matter how vile, unsupported, and provably false) about anyone without consequence,” the star’s lawyers wrote at the time.
Little has happened in the case since it was filed. Danielle was never located, and attorneys for both Bieber and Djibrine told the court in February that mediation had been unsuccessful in reaching a settlement. A trial had been tentatively scheduled for May.
In her tweets on June 20, 2020, Danielle claimed she had been sexually assaulted by Bieber in an Austin hotel room following a surprise performance at South By Southwest in March 2014. But Bieber’s lawyers said he didn’t have a room at the hotel and that there was clear evidence that he had spent the night with then-girlfriend Selena Gomez at a rental property elsewhere in Austin.
“Bieber and Gomez were together, the entire night, at the Rental Property private residence, along with several of their friends,” the star’s lawyers wrote. “The detailed narrative and defamatory lies by Danielle are factually impossible, and provably false.”
In separate tweets posted to Twitter the same day, Djibrine accused Bieber of assaulting her in a New York City hotel room in March 2015. Bieber’s lawyers said he never stayed at that hotel either, and offered photo evidence that he was at a Met Gala after-party during the alleged attack.
“Kadi, as an apparent superfan, may have waited outside his hotel at times, and like other fans, may have managed a fan photograph with him, but (if so) that is where any reality of her story ends, and her false, defamatory statements begin,” Bieber’s attorneys wrote.